"Absolutely I'm pressing charges," George said as he held an ice pack on his left jaw Monday night. "He hit me square. . . . I was hit by an NBA player in the face while I was sitting in Row L and I'm not happy."

George and other witnesses said Maxwell charged into the stands and punched him in the third quarter of the Rockets' 120-82 loss to the Portland Trail Blazers.

"I'm a fan yelling about the game," Steve George said. "I was definitely riding Vernon, you know, 'Five points, four fouls, you're not having a good night.' I don't deserve to get hit in the face for that."

Learnin the hard way

Dominique is a strapping 6-foot-6 sophomore at Gainesville Buchholz High where his dad was once a hero but the kid chose not to go out for basketball. Coaches pleaded but Dominique's mom told the Sun, "When he found out what his father did, he said he wanted in no way be like him."

Years ago, Myra would write postcards to Dominique and sign Vernon's name, so the boy would think his father cared.

Mad Max reached out once, but that had a foul odor. Vernon took third-grader Dominique for a blood test. He gave $40 to the child as hush money. Dominique told his mother anyway.

Florida lost in the second round to Michigan. Maxwell, who had been warned there would be a drug test, flunked it and admitted to smoking marijuana before leaving Gainesville. If the Wolverines had been beaten, the Gators would've been disqualified.

Maxwell became the Gator career points leader (2,450), but his final two seasons were erased after athletic director Bill Arnsparger learned Vernon had accepted money from an agent. Mad Max averaged 18.8 per game.

Penalties came from the NCAA. Rumors were thick that Maxwell used cocaine before games, the Sun reported. Word was, coach Norm Sloan knew but refused to act. Sloan later admitted to Jack Hairston, then Sun sports editor, that - in a scoreless, hopeless Mad Max appearance against Tennessee - "he was drunk."